Jan 31, 2013

Welcome to the Mr-Potato-Head Oscars

"Best Film / Best Director splits, which use to happen roughly once a decade,
have happened four times since 1998. And
while Best Actor / Actress used to follow Best Picture the majority of the time, in the last decade only
three Best Picture winners — Million Dollar Baby, The Artist, and The King’s Speech — have
generated heat for their lead actors. Increasingly, actors win awards for their
work in small, low-budget indies in which they gnaw off their left leg. The last film to pull off a sweep of all top five
categories — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best
Actress — was Silence of the Lambs, over 20 years ago. Increasingly,
sweeps are the rarity, not splits. The academy has always liked to “spread the wealth,” but this is something
different. It testifies to a much larger fragmentation that has to do with the
way business is done in Hollywood. In a
nutshell, the global blockbuster economy has scooped out what remained of the American
movie business, sending it to the hills, from which it makes the occasional
darting foray, under cover of one of the studio’s specialty divisions, or some
pocket money from HBO. As Spielberg himself noted in 1997,

"It is
getting tothe point
where only two kinds of movies are being made, the tent-pole summer or the
Christmas hits or the sequels, and the audacious Gramercy, Fine Line or Miramax
films. It’s kinda like India where there's an upper class and a poverty class
and no middle class. Right now we are squeezing the middle class out of
Hollywood and only allowing the $70 million plus films or the 10 million minus
films."

The middle-class he’s talking about is the same vegetable patch in which the Academy used to grew
it’s prize pumpkins: — middle-brow, mid-budget, prestige pics like Driving
Miss Daisy, Amadeus, and Dances With Wolves, Ghandi, and Out of Africa, which hymned the moral efficacy of a single
individual against a backdrop of
historical turmoil. It wasn’t quite a
genre, but a style of filmmaking
— a plush, roseate humanism, with sunsets to match — whose precedents stretched as far back as Lawrence of Arabia and Gone with the Wind. Well, that film is dead, and the Hollywood that made it long since vanished.
As one Disney producer recently remarked, "Everything in the middle is toast." Look at the Oscar races of recent years and you’ll see the same pattern of
blockbuster versus indie, big-budget versus small: Gladiator vs Traffic, Chicago
vs The Pianist, Avatar vs The Hurt Locker, Hugo vs The Artist. The “David vs Goliath” storyline has not become
an Oscar season cliche by accident. In this near annual face-off, both nominees
have something the other one wants or lacks. Goliath has the technical polish
the effects, the box office, the gravitas. David frequently has the acting
chops, the human scale, the warmth. Combine them and you’d have quite a picture. Combine them, in fact, and you’d have
precisely the kind of Oscar winner your mama used to make, combining epic sweep
and intimate detail, and sweeping all the main categories. This year, Lincoln is a close to
that endangered species as any. It has received more nominations than any other
film (12), has packed a has packed a hefty punch at the box office
($164+ million). It has historical sweep, awards-worthy performances and mahogany-hued gravitas. And yet the very thing that won the critics
over — Spielberg’s renunciation of all things Spielbergian — gives it a
wobbly front wheel as front-runner. On
the other hand, we have a
solidly-directed political caper which in another era might have earnt it’s
director four stars and a “good job” from the general public, but whose jaunty
mix of geopolitics and show-business savvy, together with an underdog status
only cemented by Affleck’s director snub, now put it neck-and-neck with Spielberg’s
keening thoroughbred."

You might be interested to see the process of forming Oscar predictions through the eyes of statisticians. There is an academic paper on this topic titled, "Applying discrete choice models to predict Academy Award winner." Available online.

You might be interested to see the process of forming Oscar predictions through the eyes of statisticians. There is an academic paper on this topic titled, "Applying discrete choice models to predict Academy Award winner." Available online.

B O O K S

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BEST MOVIES of 2015

1. Inside Out B+

2. MadMax: Fury RoadB+

3. The Wolfpack B+

4. 71 B+

4.While We're Yo1ung B+

5. Ex Machina B

6. Everest B

7. Jurassic World B

6.8. Spring B

9. BlackhatB-

10. Aloha B-

R E V I E W S

"What makes the book worth taking home, however, is the excellent text... by Tom Shone, a film critic worth reading whatever aspect of the film industry he talks about. (His book Blockbuster is a must).... Most critics are at their best when speaking the language of derision but Shone has the precious gift of being carried away in a sensible manner, and of begin celebratory without setting your teeth on edge." — Clive James, Prospect"A must-read for cinephiles of all ages." — Huffington Post

"The real draw here is Shone’s text, which tells the stories behind the pictures with intelligence and grace. It’s that rarest of creatures: a coffee-table book that’s also a helluva good read." — Jason Bailey, Flavorwire

"There’s a danger of drifting into blandness with this picture packed, coffee-table format. Shone is too vigorous a critic not to put up a fight. He calls Gangs “heartbreaking in the way that only missed masterpieces can be: raging, wounded, incomplete, galvanised by sallies of wild invention”. There’s lots of jazzy, thumbnail writing of this kind... Shone on the “rich, strange and unfathomable” Taxi Driver (1976) cuts to the essence of what Scorsese is capable of." — Tim Robey, The Sunday Telegraph

'A beautiful book on the Taxi Driver director's career by former Sunday Times film critic Tom Shone who relishes Scorsese's "energetic winding riffs that mix cinema history and personal reminiscence".' — Kate Muir,The Times

"An admiring but clear-eyed view of the great American filmmaker’s career... Shone gives the book the heft of a smart critical biography... his arguments are always strong and his insights are fresh. The oversized book’s beauty is matched by its brains”— Connecticut Post

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"Is there anyone now writing about movies better than Tom Shone? I think not” — John Heilemann, New York magazine

“Shone is admired on both sides of the Atlantic as a writer with a deep love of the movies and one of the sharpest voices in arts journalism... Witty and wise, all the way from Spielberg to Linklater” — Tim de Lisle, Intelligent Life

"The world's finest film critic"—The Toronto Star

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Click to order

“The film book of the year.... enthralling... groundbreaking.” — The Daily Telegraph

“Blockbuster is weirdly humane: it prizes entertainment over boredom, and audiences over critics, and yet it’s a work of great critical intelligence” – Nick Hornby, The Believer

“Beautifully written and very funny... I loved it and didn’t want it to end.” – Helen Fielding“[An] impressively learned narrative... approachable and enlightening... Shone evinces an intuitive knowledge of what makes audiences respond... One of those rare film books that walks the fine line between populist tub-thumping and sky-is-falling, Sontag-esque screed.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Exhilarating.... wit, style and a good deal of cheeky scorn for the opinions of bien-pensant liberal intellectuals.” – Phillip French, Times Literary Supplement

“Startlingly original... his ability to sum up an actor or director in one well-turned phrase is reminiscent of Pauline Kael’s... the first and last word on the subject. For anyone interested in film, this book is a must read.” – Toby Young, The Spectator

“A history of caring” – Louis Menand, The New Yorker“Smart, observant… nuanced and original, a conversation between the kid who saw Star Wars a couple dozen times and the adult who's starting to think that a handful might have sufficed.” – Chris Tamarri, The Village Voice

"A sweet and savvy page-turner of a valentine to New York, the strange world of fiction, the pleasures of a tall, full glass and just about everything else that matters" — Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story and Absurdistan